在臺國際學生華語溝通意願初探：探究溝通環境、學生的國籍背景與口語能力對口語溝通意願之影響

Explore the Level of Willingness to Communicate and Its Associative Factors among CSL (Chinese as a Second Language) Students in Taiwan

本研究檢視在臺國際生的華語「溝通意願」，並探究國際生的「國籍背景」以及「口語能力」對口語「溝通意願」的影響。以24位中高級華語程度的國際生為研究對象，比較不同國籍學生的「溝通意願」，並將學生各項「口語能力」表現（答題內容表現、發音正確率以及語速）與「溝通意願」執行相關分析。結果顯示，在「國籍背景」方面，韓國與越南籍的學生在「課堂外的溝通意願」與其他國籍的學生有顯著差異性，但在「課堂內的溝通意願」則無。在「口語能力」方面，「答題內容表現」與「溝通意願」無顯著相關，但在「發音正確率」以及「語速」上則有顯著關聯。因此答題內容表現，並不影響其溝通意願的高低，但學生卻在意語速及發音正確性。本研究顯示「國籍背景」為影響溝通意願之因素，建議未來研究應納入考量，文中亦提出可理解性假設用以解釋「口語能力」與溝通意願之相關性。

The term “willingness to communicate” (WTC) refers to the intention of initiating a conversation when given a free choice of engaging in a communication (McCroskey and Baer 1985). In this study, we explored students' level of WTC in Chinese as a second language (CSL) learning. The questions of whether students' nationalities and their oral conservation proficiencies in CSL are related to their WTC levels were also examined. Twenty-four international students who study CSL in Taiwan participated. Both in-class and out-of-class WTCs were measured. Students' conversational skill (content) performance, pronunciation performance, and speech rate were also measured to represent students' oral conservation proficiency level. Correlation analyses were then conducted to see if each of the oral conservation performance is related to the WTC. Students were separated into five groups according to their nationalities (e.g., Japan, Vietnam, Korean). The WTC among these nationalities groups were then compared. Results showed that the five groups of students differed on the out-of-class WTC but not on the in-class WTC. In particular, the out-of-class WTC scores of the students from Korean and Vietnam were significantly lower than the WTC scores of the students from other countries such as Thailand or Japan. Students' WTC is also related to their pronunciation performance and speech rate but not to their conversational skill performance. In conclusion, our results provided the initial evidence of showing the level of WTC among the international students after their three-years of learning CSL in Taiwan. CSL teachers should be aware of the differences in WTC among students from different countries. Future studies on WTC should consider the nationality factor if the participants were from different countries. In addition, this study introduced a new comprehension hypothesis in explaining the correlations between the oral proficiency level and the WTC.